Still Going Flat-Out...

graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

Continuing the series of photographically-derived drawings of overpainted roadmarkings & discarded, traffic-flattened aluminium drink cans, which could be said to combine the traditional genres of landscape (albeit of a manmade nature) & still life, even if the objects represented have been reduced to two-dimensional form.

Referring once again to the essential ‘Jasper Johns: an Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965’, I discovered featured within an image of Robert Rauschenberg’s ‘Paint Cans’ of 1954, which incorporates into its formal structure two flattened examples of the type (nothing ‘original’ is possible any longer, of course!): it’s interesting how such a work can be read art-historically as, for instance, presenting paint itself as a ‘readymade’ & the drips & runs of the paint as referring to Abstract Expressionist painting. Obviously, the whole ‘Pop Art Roadkill’ project is intended to be read similarly, with a density of references (as previously mentioned over the course of previous posts on the subject) including, not least, various aspects of the work of Jasper Johns...& now Rauschenberg, too!


Such examples lead to thoughts of developing the body of work, realising it on a larger, life-size scale & perhaps incorporating the source objects themselves into the formal construction of the image-object.

Soundtrack:


Portishead ‘Third’
Black Box Recorder ‘England Made Me’
Cocteau Twins ‘Victorialand’
Cat Power ‘The Greatest’
Young Marble Giants ‘Colossal Youth’ & ‘Singles and Salad Days’
Mazzy Star ‘So Tonight That I Might See’

The fallout from the recent Rough Trade TV celebration continues, with the most recent investment being the collected works of the Young Marble Giants, echoes of whose deceptively simple yet compelling quiet, scratchy, spacey minimalism - so spare are the formal means employed that one is forced to listen intently - may be heard in the sonic aesthetic & similar atmosphere of, for instance, Black Box Recorder. It’s enlightening to hear now, for the first time, the ‘Salad Days’ demo versions, recorded in such technologically basic form, of many of the songs featured on ‘Colossal Youth’, offering a purer distillation yet of the YMG sound than the original official release of the album: essential stuff indeed.
The whole package is a beautiful production – courtesy of Domino, who also compiled the recently-purchased & similarly expertly-presented Triffids reissues amongst others – with the compilation of music supported by a fine historically-contextualizing & explicatory essay authored by Simon Reynolds & even, delightfully, the additional inclusion of a small packet of lapel badges: a perfect record & reminder of the immediate post-punk period - when such true originals as YMG & an attendant sense of exhilarating independence flourished - & schooldays when displaying one’s musical allegiances through the medium of badges was de rigeur.